


Bring Me Up, Baby

by executrix



Category: Blakes7
Genre: AU, Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 01:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A screwball comedy involving bracelets (diamond and teleport), a scavenger hunt, and a Gurnivian cyber-tooth leopard that looks like a black-and-white cookie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bring Me Up, Baby

Bete Noire

"I don't see why I can't have one," Vila said pettishly. "Cally has a moondisk. Gan has sea monkeys. Avon has peeves."

"Out of the question," Blake told him. (They were in the galley, fixing themselves a midnight snack.) "This is not the most stable way of life, now is it?" Blake asked, draping sardines in tomato sauce over slices of hard-boiled egg on baguette. "And I know you say that you're going to feed it, and walk it, and clean out its cage, but...well, we all know what's going to happen. Even with the best will in the world, you're going to have to stand your watches, go on missions..."

"And think of how it'd pine if you got killed," Avon reassured Vila.

The discussion was interrupted by the whine of the teleport effect, and by a growl.

"Oh, that must be Baby now," Vila said, dashing toward the teleport bay, excited as a kid on Christmas morning. Avon arrived first--he was a klutz, but pretty fast with it--followed closely by Vila and Blake. "He's only two months old," Vila confided. "His last owner says that he's paper-trained, and if he gets lonely and whimpers, you should give him a good cuddle."

"So you've already bought some sort of animal," Avon said, visualizing something on the order of a hamster. "I see you've picked up Blake's debonair way with a fait accompli. How did it get here?" Avon asked.

"'S easy. I locked on the coordinates, and last time we were downplanet I just mailed a teleport bracelet to the chap who sold him to me."

"Bloody hell, Vila, you sent a teleport bracelet to someone you don't even know?" Blake asked him from the quiet side of homicidal.

"Bit of a risk, eh? But you can always trust amagon.com, they stand behind their customers."

In the teleport bay prowled a Gurnivian cyber-tooth leopard, his short, stiff, glossy fur black on one side of his body, white on the other (white socks on his two black paws, and vice versa). The teleport bracelet was clipped to his studded black leather collar. When he saw Vila, he gathered his powerful muscles into a leap.

Baby was about five feet long and three feet high at the shoulder. A full-grown Gurnivian cyber-toothed leopard is twelve feet long, six feet high.

They grow fast.

Vila rolled himself into a ball and crouched inside the kneehole of the teleport. Typical, he thought. The Universe always gets it backwards. I'm being chased by a really big pussy that probably wants to eat me.

De-Sign for Live-Erance (1)

I'm cold, Jenna thought. I'm thirsty enough for my throat to catch fire, my head hurts and I don't know where I am. She instituted the pre-flight checklist for distinguishing between captivity and the morning after the night before. When she opened her eyes just a crack, the glare of white upon shiny white forced her to squeeze her eyes shut again.

A second later, she was able to focus. She found herself lying on a white raw-silk chaise longue, wearing a sleeveless bias-cut silk negligee, with nothing but a tuxedo jacket draped over her. The fire, laid in a heavily carved white marble fireplace, had burnt out. The bevel-edged mirrors on the eggshell walls reflected one another into infinity, with dozens of grand pianos, enameled glistening white, trapped in between.

Oh gods! Jenna thought, shivering this time with dread. Servalan! But she was under no restraint, and there weren't any black-clad troopers matching the black marble tiles of the checquered floor.

A few memories began to filter in. Wasn't she supposed to be on shore leave? Jenna brushed the hair away from her forehead. Yes, there was a dent there, roughly consistent with the place that the lampshade wire would dig in, and her feet--especially the heels, that took the brunt of dancing on an unyielding surface such as a tabletop--ached.

"Darling!" a voice came from the next room. "Where are you? The eggs Benedict are nearly ready. Pop the champers into the ice bucket."

"I'm shaving, Leo," came a voice from the room beyond that. "You don't want our guest to think that she's been abducted by hairy barbarians, now do you?"

"Oh, I don't know. That might give her a thrill. Takes all kinds, you know."

"Too right, lovey!"

Jenna sat up, clutching the jacket around her, as two men entered the room. One of them, redolent of eau de Cologne, had a ruddy (and freshly-shaved) complexion. He had short fair hair and wore Oxford bags, a Fair Isle waistcoat, and a striped shirt. The other one, carrying two plates along one arm and a third plate along his other arm, had dark brilliantined hair, dark eyes set deep in glamorous shadows. He wore a brocade dressing gown, an ascot, and velvet slippers embroidered with a gold crest.

Deftly--and without scattering any ashes from the Balkan Sobranie in his long ivory cigarette-holder--he put the plates down on a glass table. "I hope you're not still too squifflicated to eat, darling," he said. "When you started doing the splits on the piano in the bar of the Metheglyn Ritz-Carlton, well, we thought it was time to take you home."

The other man sat down and poured fragrant black coffee from a silver pot into eggshell-thin cups. "We thought that you were just what needed to put a little zest into our lives. We've gotten stale, darling. We..."

"...Know each other too well. No surprises."

"And we thought that you needed a change yourself. We know all about you," the fair-haired man said. Jenna flinched, but tried not to give anything (any more?) away.

"We can see it all," the dark-haired man said, gliding fork and knife through hollandaise. "Married to a stout burgher. He may be a titan of commerce, but does he bring any of that power home to the bedroom? Does he thrill you? No, he does not."

Well, that's one way to look at it, Jenna thought.

"I'm Leo...and this is Otto."

"Je--Gennda Saville," she amended, assuming that giving her real name would be imprudent, but knowing that the most effective pseudonyms depart as little as possible from reality.

Otto refilled the champagne flutes. "To a new agenda!" he toasted.

"To Gennda...and bending," Leo said. "Sensations. Combinations. Sensational combinations."

Jenna thought about it for a moment, then clinked her glass against theirs. Apropos of which....

Rather later, Jenna stirred against Otto, who was sleeping, and Leo, who was awake. She admired the polychromatic fire flashing from the pave diamond and emerald cuff bracelet on her wrist. "Ah...where did this come from, Leo?"

"That old thing? We had it lying around the house. It's ever so much nicer than the one you were wearing."

"And what about my other bracelet, the plain one...where is it?"

"We put it in the rubbish," he said. She leaped out of bed, tore into the first clothes she found (her own ashes-of-roses evening dress, Otto's shirt, Leo's tuxedo pumps with a pair of silk boxer shorts jammed into each toe--despite her best efforts, she could only find one of her shoes).

"Where?"

"The kitchen, sweetie."

Jenna kicked the bin over, which might have been a very discourteous thing to do indeed if there had been anything in it.

Leo followed her in. "Oh, apollos, I wouldn't have taken it if I knew it meant so much to you. Well, it's gone now...the servo-bot must have emptied the bin."

"What into?"

Leo gestured toward the rubbish chute. Jenna ran down to the cellar, only to find that the refuse had already been collected, and taken to the city dump.

My Blue Heaven  
In his cabin, Avon sighed, erased the comment, and erased the twenty-four lines of code that the comment related to. He had little experience with bio-programming, and he found it hard going. There didn't seem to be much prospect of turning Baby into a drinks dispenser, but Avon would be content if he could just get the leopard to stop....dispensing.....all over his cabin, as "Me Alpha Male!" and "Bwahaha!" (along with "Nap!" and "More Snack!") looped through Baby's otherwise empty head.

"Haven't seen Baby, have you?" Vila asked. "I don't know where he's got to."

"Out the airlock, if my luck's changed."

"Don't say that!" Vila told him. "Baby's our mascot. That's a very important part of the crew. Why, if he goes, I go."

"Don't tempt me."

"Avon, we've got to find Baby," Vila whimpered. "What if he eats Cally's moondisk?"

"Well, what of it?"

"Cally will say that it's typical aggressive male behavior, and say it's for his own good and we should do it now when he's just young and she'll haul Baby off to the medical unit and..."

Vila and Avon shuddered, each reassuring himself with a testimonial clasp.

"And you know what Baby's like when he gets upset, or feels neglected..."

Yes, they had all been wondering why they kept winding up at the same nowhere asteroid, no matter how often they changed the course coordinates, until they discovered that Baby had peed in the navigation computer. Even repaired, it was still a bit redolent.

Pong. It's not just an arcade game.

Avon crouched outside the fifteenth cabin door on that side of the corridor, a porterhouse steak in one hand. "I can't give you anything but love, baby," he crooned hoarsely. "That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby."

"Charming," Blake said from inside. "But that wretched beast isn't in here."

Avon and Vila stalked the corridors, silent and watchful. Eventually, they saw Gan streak past them, pelting in the other direction. Well, not quite streak: Jenna's marabou-trimmed chiffon peignoir was wrapped around him as a loincloth.

"Errr...Gan, ummm...." Vila said.

"I've just gone gay all of a sudden," Gan snapped. "No, you bloody fool, I was trying to have a quiet bath when that creature of yours wanted to pounce on me. I grabbed the first thing I could find and legged it out of there."

"Where did he go?" Vila asked anxiously.

"Buggered if I know, but I think I heard splashing," Gan said, shivering slightly as the bathwater began to dry on his skin.

"Ta!" Vila said, and ran toward the bathroom, where he found Baby, contentedly preening himself in one of the tubs, shreds of rubber ducky between his teeth. Putting on his white tie, dancing with his tail.

Bone of Contention  
"A milk run really," Blake said, causing his entire crew to tense up. "There's a paleontologist...that's a dinosaur boffin, Vila......Dr. Junealla Vaxchez, brilliant young woman and her heart is on the right side politically too."

"The left side," Avon murmured. "In more ways than one."

"So, because she's a rebel sympathizer and she doesn't make a secret of it, the Federation are always trying to discredit her. Make out that she's a third-rate scientist, cut off her funding, keep her papers out of the journals, that sort of thing. She could put up with that easily enough, but the last time she was on a prospecting trip, they tampered with her flyer. She just about managed to get out alive, and a free-trader ship picked her up.

Trouble is, she had to abandon the specimens she'd found, the ones that prove her theory about the anatomy of the...well, Somethingsaurus, she told me but it just didn't stick in my head. Apparently, she's found a prize specimen intercostal clavicle, and that shows that the thing swam instead of flew, or flew instead of swam...be that as it may, now all we have to do is pop over where she crash-landed on Metheglyn and get her specimen boxes and take them back to her on ChuongTse 3."

"Well, it's her dinosaur, why can't she do it herself?" Vila asked.

"Be fair, Vila. She's a scientist, not a soldier. Her nerve's a bit shot, and I can't say I blame her."

"Does anyone know that we're taking an interest?" Avon asked.

"Don't think so."

"How are we going to find these remains of a saurian stockpot when there's an entire planet to look in? If she put a tracer on it, and we're following that, then I shouldn't be surprised if the Federation have those specimens already," Avon said.

"No tracer, but she's a scientist, after all. She made very careful observations and noted them down. Anyway, one of the things that saved her when she pranged...it was into the town rubbish dump, they've got mountains of stuff, and it cushioned her landing. So we know where the boxes are, or where they used to be anyhow. So, as for your next objection, we'd best get on the move, give the stuff less time to disappear."

My Man Ganfrey (1)

Sod! Gan thought, emerging from a secluded location buttoning his trousers, just as Blake, Avon, and specimen boxes vanished. All that expensive Alpha education, and they can't even count to three. He lifted his wrist to call the ship.

Oh, what a surprise, he thought. That naffing one-size-fits-all teleport bracelet fell off again. Cally can't keep one on for a minute, it drops right off her wrist, and the clasp on mine never stays closed because the bracelet's too small.

Right, then, I'll just go back and look for the bracelet, he told himself. But his path was intercepted by two young women in evening dresses, picking their way daintily along on high heels.

"Oooh, you're a big one," one of the squealed. "Who are you?"

"Me? I'm the forgotten Gan," he said philosophically.

They squealed in tandem. "We're on a scavenger hunt," one of them said. "It's for charity, the money that's left over, only there never is any...."

"And we're going to win!" the other said. "All we need is a forgotten man!"

Well, Gan thought, close enough for government work. Either someone will rescue me--you can always count on Blake in a pinch--or I'll just stay here with these two totties. Unless they have a leopard, of course.

It Happened One Night (1)  
"Oh, thumping Thaarn, not again," Cally said, gazing with dismay at the magnetic whiteboard behind the teleport. There were little Liberator icons next to Cally's and Vila's names (and next to Baby's, scrawled by Vila at the bottom of the chart), indicating that they were on the ship. There was a red star next to Jenna's name: shore leave. There were three blue squares for Blake, Avon, and Gan, assigned to the mission. Cally was able to swap two of the blue squares for ship icons, but...

"Wasn't he..."

"I thought he was with you," Blake and Avon said simultaneously.

"Gan...come in, Gan," Cally said, without much hope. Gan was probably tied to a tree, being chased by vicious robots, wrestling a crocodile, being worshipped by a cargo cult, or otherwise unavailable for comment.

"Oh, all right, I'll go," Avon said. "Blake, you've got that big bone to deal with." He had already put his bracelet back in the rack, and his boots were off, slung over his arm; he bent down to put them back on.

"Do you want to rephrase that?" Vila asked.

"I'll go," Cally said. "Makes a change from being welded to the teleport."

De-Sign for Live-Erance (2)  
After a brief and not very enjoyable hike around the garbage dump, Jenna descried a familiar glitter. Oh, thank heavens, she thought, picking up Gan's teleport bracelet. It could have gotten buried under these tons of muck.

"Gennda--ah, Jenna here! Bring me up!"

Vila switched her red star for a ship icon. No need to ask her if she enjoyed her shore leave. She was shagged out, hung over, and wearing an outfit that was not only different from the one she left in, but utterly strange. A perfect score. He would have enjoyed asking her for details, but he knew that whatever bits she remembered, she was going to put on a strict need-to-know basis.

It Happened One Night (2)

Cally hiked onto the highway, a few hundred yards away from where Gan had last been seen. {{Don't worry, I'm coming for you}} she telepathed reassuringly, although of course that did nothing to help her locate one needle, however large, in a haystack, and she had no way of knowing if he were close enough to hear her.

It was a hot day, although Cally's sailor-collared georgette frock was reassuringly cool. And the suitcase, containing a quartet of teleport bracelets and assorted artillery in case Gan had to be blasted out of somewhere, was heavy.

Although numerous pick-up trucks, Duesenbergs, roadsters, and flivvers passed by, that is exactly what they did--pass her by. {{Humans!}} So she put the suitcase down on the shoulder, put her foot up on it, and let the breeze whip the wide skirt around her trim leg.

A minute later, a Model A pulled up, driven by a raffishly handsome young man with a pencil-thin moustache. The limb is mightier than the thumb.

There was a piece of cardboard stuck into the band of his felt trilby. It said "Press," which confused Cally for a moment until she decided it was descriptive rather than imperative.

"Hey, Sister!" he said breezily. "I betcha I know your story. You're a runaway heiress, don't want to marry the boring old goop your Pater has all picked out for you."

"Why, however, did you know?" Cally asked demurely, hoisting the suitcase into the back seat.

"I'm in the news game, sweetheart, it's my business to know."

They drove for a while, Cally musing that he really was rather handsome, in the style of that ancient matinee idol whose name she could not quite remember...the one that Jenna liked....

They got to the center of town, and he leaped out of the car. "Gotta go file my copy, dollface." First, however, he gallantly lifted the suitcase out of the back seat for her. "Whatcha got in here? A dead elephant?"

"Well, you see, I had to take a job as a travelling saleslady to support myself when I ran away. You know, housewares, notions..."

"What kinda notions you got?"

"You'd be surprised," Cally said.

As soon as the newshound found a pay telephone and barked, "Hello, sweetheart, give me rewrite," Cally found a secluded corner and called the ship. "Oh, hullo, Jenna, did you have a nice shore leave? Ummmhmmm. Down safely, met a bloke who looks like that fellow you have the holo of....name's on the tip of my tongue...George Clooney!"

"Give him one for me, then."

"I just might. Has Gan called in?"

"Not a sausage."

When Cally broke the connection, she walked past an adorable urchin in plus-fours and a tweed cap. "Wuxtry, wuxtry, read all about it!" he shouted. Fortunately Cally came equipped with local currency, so she was able to purchase the very interesting newspaper, which bore a front-page picture of Gan under the headline, "Forgotten Man New Niterie Boss."

My Man Ganfrey (2)

Cally was grateful that the mission could be accomplished so quickly--she only had one evening dress in her suitcase. When night fell, she took a taxi to the town's newest club, The City Dump. Sure enough, Gan was there, in a custom-made tuxedo, steering parties to the central tables or to Siberia, depending on what one of his two young lady friends whispered in his ear.

Cally noticed that he had either grown (with remarkable rapidity) or penciled on one of those unreliable looking little mustaches. It must be endemic around here.

Gan soon spotted her, and an expression of mingled joy and apprehension spread over his broad face. He led her into his office, and mixed her a cracklingly cold, dry martini to give himself time to think.

"I've got teleport bracelets in my suitcase, in the checkroom," Cally said. "Let's go."

Gan sipped at his own martini. "It's more complicated than that..."

"Those two girls? Oh, what the hell, I've got four bracelets, we can drop them off at Space City when you're tired of them."

Truth to tell, he was a bit tired of them already. He was glad that his limiter prevented him from doing anything he would really regret, but when he bundled up one of them and tossed her into a cold shower, she only squealed, "Oh, Mother! Gan loves me! He put me under the shower!" which was not at all what he meant.

On the one hand, in his present situation...  
1\. Life of luxury  
2\. Ability to create jobs for down-on-their-luck veterans  
3\. Martinis ad libitum  
4\. Absence of pursuit ships  
5\. No leopard

Balanced against...  
1\. Blake's inspirational leadership  
2\. Ability to fight for freedom of oppressed everywhere in the Universe  
3\. No martinis, although Zen should be able to do something if asked  
4\. Pursuit ships ad libitum  
5\. Large and ever-increasing sums of money owed to Vila for card games of dubious fairness  
6\. Avon  
7\. Leopard

For a long moment, it hung in the balance, until Cally recalled him to the good fight. "Is that all you want to do with your life?" she asked scornfully. "Hold up the door in a nightclub?"

Flying Down to Rio

The limousine liberals of ChuongTse3, many of whom were already museum patrons, gathered for a festive evening to celebrate Dr. Vaxchez' complete reconstruction of her Somethingsaurus. (They didn't care either.) A bandstand, complete with white piano and accommodations for three vocalists and a thirty-piece band, was in place, and unsuccessful actors circulated with trays of canapes and alleged champagne.

The employer of Baby's original owner strode into the rotunda of the Natural History Museum, the ostrich feathers of her hem swirling around the diamante heels of her d'Orsay pumps.

In a low, quiet, but distinct voice, Servalan began to sing: "I can't give you anything but love, Baby..."

Baby broke away from Vila's restraining hand, his leash slapping the ground as he ran. Baby leaped straight up, as if he were about to slam-dunk. But instead of putting something into a hoop he took something out. He snagged the intercostal clavicle and sank back to the floor, the bone remaining in his mouth. Then he dashed out of the rotunda and down the noble marble staircase, with Vila and Dr. Vaxchez in hot pursuit, and vanished like a gambler's lucky streak.

The rest of the skeleton collapsed, just as the roof slid open and half a dozen model biplanes were lowered on wires. Standing on each of them was a Federation trooper, in full uniform, holding a projectile rifle at port arms. They paused for a moment, posing magnificently, then broke into a well-rehearsed soft-shoe shuffle.

Blake sat down heavily, in the middle of the now-tumbled heap of dinosaur bones, and sank his face into his hands. Avon knelt beside him, one arm around Blake's shoulder in a public show of support and affection that was somewhat vitiated by laughing his arse off.

Travis, resplendent in a leather tuxedo, black satin eyepatch matching his tie and cummerbund, put his arm around Servalan and drew her close. "Heaven..." he crooned. "I'm in Heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak."

"I won't dance, don't ask me," Servalan said.

The band took its cue from him. A few couples began to dance, a little uneasily.

"Oh, I love to shoot civilians, when you stamp your foot in pique, but I don't enjoy it half as much as dancing cheek to cheek," Travis sang, his lips vibrating against Servalan's neck.

"Either find the Liberator, or I'd call your prospects bleak," Servalan snapped, drawing away from Travis. But she drew away only enough to extend her hand to him and rest her other hand on his waist. "But I don't enjoy that half as much as dancing cheek to cheek," she conceded, and glided off with Travis.

Backwards and in high heels.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to "Bringing Up Baby," "My Man Godfrey," and "Design for Living."


End file.
